


beyond all earthly words and songs of blessing

by Quietbang



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But also, Canon Character of Color, Canon Queer Character, F/F, Finding Love, Ghosts, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Jewish Character, M/M, Marijuana, No Incest, Past Abuse, Peace Movement, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Gen, Queer love, Racism, Recreational Drug Use, Sibling Bonding, Smoking, There will be activism, There will be ghosts, There will be politics, There will no tragic gays, Veterans, Who is dead, finding it again, losing love, well except for Dave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26260591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/pseuds/Quietbang
Summary: They made it.It was 2019 again, and Klaus was exhausted -- they all were -- and they had so many things to do but all he wanted was to sleep.He couldn’t save them. Couldn’t save any of them, couldn’t stop the war that would claim 1 million innocent Vietnamese people and thousands of soldiers for no fucking reason at all, and all wars are political and most are useless but it was hard not to feel like that one was particularly so.He couldn’t save Dave.In which Vanya finds her long lost love, Allison finds her voice, and Klaus is just trying to hold everything together.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz, Raymond Chestnut/Allison Hargreeves, Sissy Cooper/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 133





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for whole fic: mentions of war, descriptions of protests and police brutality, implications of abuse, panic attacks, recreational drug use, and mentions of ghosts doing weird ghost stuff  
> I haven't written fanfic in several years, and have never written for this fandom, but I felt that some of the most compelling storylines of season 2 - Allison and the Civil Rights Movement and Vanya and Sissy's relationship in particular - were either not given enough attention or were handled in really uncomfortable ways.  
> I also felt that Klaus and the Vietnam War were not handled terribly well, and wanted to reckon with the ways in which the war left its mark on him both in terms of PTSD etc. but also how it may have impacted his politics and views of the world.  
> Title from the Mourner's Kaddish.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive in 2019, a little worse for wear. Klaus and Vanya have a heart-to-heart, moderately assisted via some weed.

**April, 2019**  
They made it.  
It was 2019 again, and Klaus was exhausted -- they all were -- and they had so many things to do but all he wanted was to sleep.  
He couldn’t save them. Couldn’t save any of them, couldn’t stop the war that would claim 1 million innocent Vietnamese people and thousands of soldiers for no fucking reason at all, and all wars are political and most are useless but it was hard not to feel like that one was particularly so. 

He couldn’t save Dave. 

They popped out into the middle of a street, and the first thing they did was check the date -- Number 5 rushing to the corner to buy a newspaper.  
It was the right year, and the right city, and they were home.  
They trudged wearily towards the academy, and everything was as they had left it before they went to the concert hall to stop Vanya, a month ago or a year ago or three years ago, depending on who you asked, and as they approached the door Klaus looked over at Vanya, who was crying quietly, at Allison, whose jaw was set in a firm line, swallowing down any of her emotions so she could do her job, at Diego, who looked slightly shell-shocked, at Luther, who frowned and seemed to steel himself before pushing open the door. 

Klaus waited as everyone filed in, uncertain if he could will himself into doing the same, until it was just him and Vanya standing on the porch in front of the imposing building.  
“Aren’t you going in?” he asked softly, and that seemed to startle Vanya out of her stupor. 

“No, I don’t --- I mean, I have my own place.” she said quietly. “I should go there instead. This isn’t -- this isn’t home.” 

Klaus lifted one section of his mouth in a half-smile. “It’s nobody’s home, dear sister of mine, except Pogo’s. Maybe Luther. I don’t really know what his deal is, but I think he stays here when he isn't’t, you know, on the moon.”  
She laughed. “Dad really sent him to the moon, huh?”  
“I mean I can’t pretend I don’t understand, if Luther was my kid I’d probably send him to the moon too, just to avoid dealing with him.”  
“You don’t mean that.”  
“No,” he said after a moment. “I guess I don’t.” 

They stood in silence for a moment, before Klaus broke it. “It’s not really my home either, I suppose, but I don’t have anywhere else to go -- besides, The Commission may be dealt with for now but somehow I don’t think we’ve heard the last of them, we should probably stick together. For security reasons, at least.”  
Vanya nodded, her face still drawn and pale.  
Klaus attempted a comforting smile. It wasn’t an effective attempt. 

“Well,” Klaus said after a moment. “We don’t have to go inside yet, and you can go home if you want -- but I have to sit down, my knee is fucking killing me.” He huffed, shifting his weight to the other leg before sinking slowly to a seated position on the wide, imposing veranda.  
“Your knee? Were you injured in the fight -- I’m so sorry Klaus, I didn’t see, I --”  
He cut her off. “No, it’s an old -- an old injury, Vanya, don’t worry about it.” He patted the spot next to him. “Sit with me. Tell your big brother Klausy what’s eating you.”  
She sat, a frown of concern creasing her face. “An old injury? From training? And we’re the same age, Klaus, that’s kinda the whole thing. We even spent the same amount of time in the 60s.” At the mention of the 60s, her face turned paler. 

“Ah, but I have 10 months on all of you, so aside from Number 5, I think that makes me the older brother.” 

“What are you talking about, Klaus?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he waved a hand dismissively, “Don’t worry about it, lord knows nobody else has.” 

She looked at him, her eyes full of sadness. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Nobody worried about me for years, and look where that got us.” 

“Well,” Klaus said briskly. “I’m changing that right now. What’s wrong?” 

“I -- I don’t know. I just. I left someone behind, I guess. Someone I cared about a lot, and someone who -- for once in my life -- cared about me, too.” 

Klaus sighed. “I know the feeling.” 

“You can’t,” she said, her voice breaking a bit, “You can’t know what this is like, even Allison -- I know she loved Ray, or loves Ray, I guess, but she has other people. You have people. I’ve never had someone before. Not like Sissy.” 

“I promise you, I do,” he said. “I can’t -- I can’t talk about it right now, not properly, but I do. I do know how you feel.” 

“I left her behind, she asked me to leave her behind, and she could have come with me! She could have come to 2019 where it’s safe -- or not safe, but safer, so much safer than 1963, and we could have had -- we could have had-- “ she stopped, choking on her own words. “We could have had a family.”  
Tears were running down her face, and she scooted closer to Klaus, until he sighed theatrically and wrapped an arm around her. “You couldn’t be having this breakdown on someone else?” he teased lightly. “Allison, maybe? Someone who is a bit better at the whole, comforting thing?”

“She wouldn’t understand.” 

“She might.” 

“No. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be the unloved one, the one who always gets left behind. You do.” 

“I do at that, dear sister,” he sighed heavily. “I do at that.” 

Next to Vanya, Klaus had always been the most useless one, the one who only got to go on missions as a lookout, whose powers were almost useless in a combat context, who left home as soon as he could and drowned himself in sensation until it blocked out the screams. 

“We could look her up,” he suggested quietly. “She might still be alive. Harlan almost definitely is.” 

“What if she isn’t? I don't -- I don't want to know that, or to get my hopes up. It hurts too much.”

“Then I will figure out how to find her in the afterlife -- although Lord knows my skills in that area have thus far been extremely fucking deficient in terms of getting them to do what I want to, when I want to, but if she is dead she probably died recently and at least that should be easier, the ghosts that make themselves known to me when I’m not, like, actively looking for them or when I’m not in, like, a particularly ghost-y place tend to be newer. And I will bring her to you, and you can catch up and say goodbye. I’ll translate.” 

She nodded against his shoulder. “That would be -- that would be nice, I guess. You’re... you’ve changed, Klaus.” 

“Shh!” he said, “Don’t say that where anyone can hear you! We can’t have that getting around, people will start to _expect_ things of me.” 

He paused. “Also, I haven’t changed _that much_. I did start a cult.” 

“So you admit it was a cult!” 

“I admit that it was an alternative spiritual community, which some people might call a cult, but I maintain that the difference between a cult and a religious tradition is just a matter of perspective.” 

“You were quoting TLC as your scripture.” 

“I’m a queer born in 1989, Vanya, TLC _is_ scripture.” 

She laughed softly at that, and he grinned, proud of himself. 

“Now, let us go use the internet and look up your long-lost lesbian love, hmm? God, I’ve missed the internet.” 

They stood up, Klaus hissing as his bad knee clicked at the movement. 

Vanya frowned. “Are you alright?”

“See?” he said, with a grin he hoped was sufficiently roguish. “Told you I was your older brother! What kind of 30 year old has bad knees, hmm?”

They walked into the mansion, past the imposing front parlour where their father had entertained important guests, past the kitchen where some of their happiest -- or maybe their only happy -- memories lived, past the training rooms and up the long, winding staircase until they reached the very top where their childhood bedrooms were, far enough away that aforementioned important guests would never hear Vanya practicing her violin or Klaus’s nightmares. 

Klaus didn’t have a computer -- honestly, he’d forgotten that, what with the whole time-travel adventure, but he had pawned it for drug money years ago -- and Vanya’s was still in her apartment, probably, presuming that they had returned on the right day and not several months later and she hadn’t been evicted for non-payment of rent, her stuff thrown in trash bags and left on the curb. That had happened to Klaus before. 

“We’ll go to the library tomorrow,” Klaus promised. “For now --” he opened the door to his bedroom, beckoning his little sister inside. He began to open drawers and rummage through bags, as Vanya looked on, concerned. 

“What are you looking for? I thought you were clean? Or, shit, sorry, that’s not what you’re supposed to call it, I didn’t mean to imply that you were dirty, that’s not what I mean, it’s just -- I thought you were sober, more or less.” 

Klaus smiled gently. Vanya had been the only one of his siblings to show up to mandatory family therapy during his stints in rehab, and the only one who did any of the reading. “It’s ok,” he said gently. “I’m soberish, I promise. There’ve been a few wobbles along the way, but I haven’t done hard drugs in -- a while. I’m just looking for my weed.” 

“Doesn’t that count?”

“Not if it’s medicinal, dear sister.” and with that, he pulled out a small black metal box with an engraved lid. “Found it, by the way.” 

He opened another drawer and produced a pack of rolling papers, pulled one off, and frowned. His hand was shaking, the motherfucker. 

“Can you do it?” He said. “I don’t -- well, it appears my nerves will not be cooperating with me today. I have a pipe here somewhere, but this is easier. You know how, right?”

“Klaus, I went to _music school_ ,” Vanya said with a slight smirk. “Of course I know how to roll a joint.” 

She opened the box and went to work. “We must not have been gone that long,” she said in a bemused tone, “This stuff’s still pretty fresh. Where’s your grinder?”  
10 minutes later, they were both holding expertly rolled joints and were sitting on the floor with their backs pressed against Klaus’ childhood bed. He pulled an engraved Zippo lighter out of his back pocket and lit them both before handing one back to his sister. 

“Why couldn’t you roll it?” Vanya said. “Are you in withdrawal again? There are meds for that now, Klaus, you know that, I’m sure Mom still has some --” 

Klaus raised a hand, silencing her. “I’m not in withdrawal. At least, I don’t think so. I went on a bit of a bender there for a while, but I don’t think I’m physically dependent on booze again, or at least not yet. I just -- shit, sorry, before I can explain why I can’t roll a joint right now, I’m gonna need to smoke at least a bit of this joint. It’s something of a paradox.” 

Vanya inhaled deeply, holding her breath before exhaling two perfect smoke rings. “Nicest paradox our family has ever been involved in.” 

“I guess -- wait, where did you learn how to do smoke rings? I’ve never been able to do smoke rings, and I'm the drug expert round here -- it’s extremely fucking annoying.” 

“Again, Klaus,” she said, “I went to music school.” 

Klaus laughed, and they smoked quietly for a few minutes. 

“So,” Vanya said, “Gonna answer my questions, now?”

“Right,” Klaus said, feeling the warm mellow feeling recede slightly. At least his knee felt better. “So. Um. After dad’s funeral, five turned up.” 

“I know this, Klaus.” 

“Right, of course you do, it's just -- ok, so you know the briefcase we used to go home? Those are, uh, standard issues for The Commission.” 

“Again, I know this.” 

“Right, right -- look, if you’re going to keep interrupting me this story is never going to happen, ok?”

“Sorry.” 

Klaus took a lazy drag, stretching slightly. “So, right, The Commission was after Five -- again, I know you know this, don’t interrupt -- and they came looking for him. They got me instead.” 

“Shit,” Vanya said, eyes widening. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.” 

He waved a hand lazily. “It’s fine, it all worked out in the end, I guess. So they kidnapped me, took me to a shitty, pay-by-the-hour hotel, and after some light torture and quite a bit of screaming, Ben helped me escape.”

“Sounds like Ben,” she said quietly. “He helped me, too. Back in Dallas. He’s definitely the best person among our siblings. Or was, I guess.” 

“Yeah,” Klaus said with a slight quiver to his voice. “I miss that fucker, if only because I didn’t get to yell at him nearly enough about possessing me, the little bitch.”  
He took another drag. “Anyway, so, Ben and a little ghost army -- turns out that when your job is being a time-traveling assassin, there are a lot of non-metaphorical ghosts following you in addition, to, I presume, the metaphorical ones -- helped me escape, and I, uh, I stole a briefcase.” 

“Klaus,” she said softly. “Why would you do that? That just guaranteed they’d come after you!”

“I didn’t know what it was! I thought it was -- I thought maybe there was something inside I could pawn for, well, for--”

“-- For drugs,” Vanya interrupted. “It’s ok, Klaus. I get it.” 

“I just --” Klaus said, his voice taking a slightly pleading tone. “I -- they make the ghosts stop, Vanya, and I’d just summoned an army of them. I needed to get rid of the ghosts.” 

“I know, Klaus,” she said softly. “I went to those therapy sessions, remember?”

“I do, and thank you for that. The shrink thought I was being metaphorical.” 

She took another drag of the joint and squeezed his knee comfortingly. “Do you have an ashtray, by the way?”

“Oh, you can just ash it on the floor, that’s what I usually do.” 

“Klaus.” 

“Fine, fine, there’s one on the nightstand over there, can you grab it? I don’t really want to stand up.” 

She rolled her eyes and grabbed the cut-glass ashtray. “Where did you get this? This is way too nice for you to own. No offense.” 

“Stole it from dad’s study after the funeral. I was going to sell it, but, well. We got distracted.” 

“Right,” she said. “Sure. Ok. So you got kidnapped and tortured, and then you stole the magic briefcase that your torturers used to travel through time.” 

“Right, right,” Klaus said. “So I took it, and then I got on a bus, and I opened it, and -- well, you know, I traveled in time. Which is what those briefcases for, so that makes sense.” 

“But you didn’t know that” 

“But I didn’t know that,” Klaus echoed softly, looking out the window. He closed his eyes briefly against the flashes of memories. “And it dropped me into the middle of the fucking Vietnam War.” 

“What?” Vanya sounded horrified. “What do you mean, it dropped you into the Vietnam War? What the hell, Klaus?”

“My thoughts exactly, my darling sister.” He frowned as he took a final drag on the joint. “Shit, I’m running out, here, can you roll me another? And for yourself, if you want, obviously.” 

“We’re gonna smoke all your weed,” Vanya said warningly. 

“It’s fine, it’s 2019 again, I can literally get some in five minutes if I want. I just -- I need something to get through the rest of this story.” 

She nodded, and rolled them 2 more joints. 

“Right,” Klaus said, after taking a drag on the new joint. “Where was I?”

“You’d jumped from being tortured in a roach motel to being dropped into the middle of the Vietnam War.” 

“Right, right,” he said. “So, uh, it was the Vietnam War, and, um, well, I was an able-bodied man, they weren’t just gonna look gift cannon-fodder in the mouth, and honestly I think they might have thought I was an escaped POW? I did a pretty good job of faking amnesia, and they just kinda... went with it.” 

“Shit.” 

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. It all sucked. It sucked like. A fucking lot. And I didn’t know what to do.” 

“Why didn’t you just come home? You had the briefcase.” 

“Yeah, I had the briefcase,” he said heavily. “But at first I wasn’t sure how it worked -- it’s in the locking mechanism, by the way, that’s how they decide what year it goes to, but it took me a while to figure that out -- and by the time I had figured that out, I’d met him. And I couldn’t leave him behind.” 

“Him?” Vanya asked. “Who is “him”, Klaus?”

“David Jonathan Katz.” Klaus sighed. “His uncle convinced him to join up, but I think he really - I think he really believed in it, at the beginning. Not so much by the time I met him, though. And he was the kindest, most wonderful man I have ever met.” 

He was silent as he took another drag on the joint, and after a few minutes, Vanya prompted him. “What happened then, Klaus?”

Klaus laughed, a horrible, choking, broken laugh. “It was war, Vanya. What the fuck do you think happened next?”

She flinched at the rawness of his words. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m -- I’m just so fucking tired, Vanya.” 

“I know,” she said softly. “You don’t have to tell me anything else. I think I can guess what happened next.” 

“No,” he said. “I should tell you. In for a penny, in for a fucking pound, right? I was there for -- for just over 10 months. It wasn’t. It wasn’t pleasant. I, uh, I got shot at one point -- but it was a through-and-through, in the knee, so I didn’t get sent home. Spent a few weeks recovering in a field hospital, got some extra leave, but then it was back to the front, dodging shrapnel and angry ghosts. And now my knee hurts when it rains and I’ve got ringing in one ear.” 

“And your hand?” Vanya asked quietly. 

“That’s just in my head, I think,” Klaus said, laughing slightly. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “I don’t know. Lord knows I haven’t been checked over by a doctor between then and now. I did take some shrapnel to the shoulder, it might be nerve damage from that, or it could be from the zip ties that Hazel and Cha-Cha had me in, I don’t know. But anyway. I went back out, and it was... I don’t know, Vanya, it was awful, there were so many fucking ghosts, I really don’t recommend going to a fucking war zone if your special skill is _seeing ghosts_ , but I was good at it. And I hate that I was good at it, because we shouldn’t have fucking been there at all and being ‘good at it’ meant that I was good at killing people who shouldn’t have been killed in a country we shouldn’t have been and in a time I didn’t belong to. But I was good at it, and it was nice not to be -- not to be the fuck-up, you know?”

“I know,” Vanya said quietly. “That’s how I feel about the violin, and why I -- why I thought I loved Leonard, at least at first. Because I was good at something for the first time in my life, and for the first time in my life, someone was proud of me.” 

Klaus squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Van. We weren’t good to you. You deserved better.” 

“We all deserved better,” she said. “That’s what my therapist said.” 

Klaus closed his eyes. “Yeah. We did.” 

They were quiet for a few minutes. 

Finally, Klaus opened his eyes, blinking away visions of red and heat and the sounds of chopper blades. “I need to -- I need to tell you what happened next.” 

“You don’t have to,” Vanya said. “I can guess. Unlike everyone else in this family, I actually paid attention in school.” 

Klaus laughed, and then licked his lips. “Shit, I hate dry-mouth, I always forget about that -- anyway, that’s not the point, sorry, I do need to tell you this, though, because I don’t think I can tell it more than once and everyone else has figured something is up with me and -- shit, Vanya, I hate to put this on you, but I need you to tell them what I’ve told you if they ask. I just. I can give them the highlights, but I can’t tell them the whole story again.” 

“Ok,” she said. “Finish the story, then.” 

“I fell in love,” he said quietly. “And Dave loved me back. We made plans -- we were going to find a place together, after the war, somewhere in the mountains, somewhere peaceful. We couldn’t get married, we couldn’t adopt, but we could get a couple of cats and we could’ve been -- Christ, Vanya. We could’ve been so happy. And instead-- he got shot, he got shot in the fucking heart, and I held him as he bled out and I screamed for a medic and he told me -- shit, I’m sorry, I don’t think I can tell you what he told me, I need that to be-- I need that --”

“-- You need it to be for you,” Vanya said. “I know. I really do know. 

“Yeah,” Klaus said, smiling bitterly. “I guess you do. But anyway. I couldn’t stay, not after that, and when we got back to the barracks there was so much confusion, we lost a lot of people that day, and I just -- I slipped out with the briefcase and opened it and got thrown right back to 2019. Only hours had passed. And I was alone, and Dave was dead, and nobody would believe me -- so I just. I stopped talking about him. And I got sober for him, to try and summon him, to find his ghost -- but I couldn’t find him. I have his tags, though.” 

He pulled the chain off his neck and showed them to her. 

“Jewish, huh?” Vanya said quietly. “Then may his memory be for a blessing.” 

Klaus smiled slightly at that, and wiped the tears from his face with a corner of his dusty bedspread. 

“Anyway,” he said, in a tone of false, harsh brightness. “That’s my tragic gay love story from the 60s. Let’s make sure yours has a happier ending.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At one point in this fic Vanya mistakenly refers to Klaus being sober as being "clean". She corrects herself. but I wanted to note that this terminology is generally frowned upon by people who work with people who inject drugs, as well as people who inject drugs themselves, because it implies that to be addicted to drugs is to be "dirty" or "soiled" in some way.  
> Also, I totally understand and respect people who have stopped using injection drugs who also avoid marijuana in all its forms -- but I also know a lot of folks with opioid use disorder for whom it is, in essence, medicinal -- and as a chronic pain patient who uses it and the sibling of someone with OUD who uses it to stave off craving for opiates, I wanted to note that that is also a completely valid medicinal use. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip to the library. A momentous phone call. Bagels.

They fell asleep in his bed that night, curled around each other as though they were children again and had had a bad training session, although that wasn’t right, really, because even when they were children they hadn’t done that, not like Luther and Allison, poor scared broken Klaus and poor scared broken Vanya, separated by what had seemed to be an insurmountable barrier of powers/no powers, and even if that had been the case, even if that had been true, they should have known better, should have been better to each other, Klaus thinks. 

No matter. They could try again now. 

They awoke when the sun rose, or Klaus did, anyhow, ripping himself from his blankets and on his feet before he had really opened his eyes, mouth opening to wake up Dave, tell him that they’d overslept and their leave ended today and they really did need to be on their way before anyone put two and two together and figured out what they had been doing, and besides they both needed some time, an hour at least, to pull themselves out of this false comfort and back into their shells because how else were they going to survive this _stupid fucking war_ , and then he blinked and he realized he was home, or not-home, but at the Academy, and honestly you could forgive him for the confusion because that was the longest he’d slept without nightmares in -- years, and the last time had been that last leave with Dave before-- well. Before. 

  
  


Vanya stirred a little, eyes still closed. “Sissy?” she mumbled. “Is that you? Come back to bed.”

Klaus’s heart clenched. He didn’t want to be the one who broke the spell for her, to tell her that no, this was the future and she was alone, because he knew that feeling all too well and it hurt, it hurt so much. 

And she looked so peaceful like this, lit from behind by the early-morning sun, sleep having smoothed the seemingly-permanent crinkles of stress from her forehead. His little sister. He could watch her all day. 

“You gotta wake her up, dude,” Ben said from the corner. “It’s weird to watch someone sleep.” 

“Shit!" Klaus said. "Ben, no, seriously, what the fuck, you're dead-dead for real this time, if that was a fucking prank or something I will fucking kill you, like man what the hell. Also, fuck you,” Klaus said, quietly. “As if you can talk, you’ve done it to me for fucking years, you weirdo.” 

“Only when I was worried you were going to choke on your own vomit!” Ben snapped.

“Oh, fuck you, that’s not at all true --” Klaus cut himself off as Vanya woke in earnest. 

“Klaus?” Vanya said, sitting up and stretching. “Who are you talking to?”

“Our dear brother, Van, who I think just implied I’m some kind of pervert for not wanting to wake you up.” 

“Our brother -- I -- Klaus. Ben’s dead. For real this time, remember?”

Klaus frowned at that. Right. He’d told Vanya that he'd finally moved on, but not before saving the world in the process. “She’s right, dude. You moved on, remember? Passed into the light and all that.” 

Ben shrugged. “Yeah, I did, and frankly I was really enjoying myself, before God -- and holy shit, Klaus, you didn’t think to tell me that God is both real and extremely weird -- appeared before me and told me that she was sorry to tell me this but that my ridiculous family had found its way back to the future and that she wouldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to but that if I did want to there was a ticket back to Earth with my name on it. It was a literal ticket, too. Weird stuff.” 

“Yeah, she’s a little brat, isn’t she?” Klaus said. “And I didn’t think I needed to tell you! You’re a ghost!” 

“Yeah, but I never made it that far. Got on the train only for the guy who checks the tickets to tell me that mine wasn’t good for another few decades and that he was sorry but I needed to turn around and go back to Earth or whatever.” 

“I can’t believe an actual train is involved. And does that mean like, St. Peter or whoever is a ticket inspector? Shit, hope that means he has a union,” Klaus said. 

“No, seriously, Klaus,” Vanya said in a worried tone. “Who are you talking to?”

“Make me visible, dude,” Ben said. “She thinks you’re having a nervous breakdown.” 

“ _I_ think I’m having a nervous breakdown,” Klaus shot back. “But fine, sure, let’s give this one a try, why not, it's always a great way to start the day.” 

He frowned in concentration. 

“You really do look like you’re trying to shit yourself when you make that face,” Ben said. 

“Yeah, he totally does,” Vanya said automatically, before realizing. “Holy shit, Ben, what the hell? You died! You died in my arms.” 

“Yeah, I’m pretty good at that,” Ben said, before shooting a look of apology to Klaus. After all, he’d died for the first time in Klaus’s arms. “Anyway, it’s a long story that I’m pretty sure would cause like irreparable damage to most if not all theological perspectives on earth, but suffice it to say, I was given a choice, and for some incomprehensible reason I decided to kick it with you nerds for another few decades before starting my eternity in paradise.” 

“Right,” Vanya said slowly. “Ok. Sure. Can we get some coffee now? I definitely need coffee for this.” 

They stop at a deli on the way to the library.  
“Shit, I missed this,” Klaus said, his mouth full. “Who knew you couldn’t get good fucking bagels in Dallas in 1963? They don’t cover that shit in history class.” 

“You wouldn’t know if they did,” Vanya teased. “You didn’t pay any attention when Pogo taught us that stuff. Or when he taught us science, or geography, or -- well, anything really.” 

“That’s not fair, I paid attention to literature! We just didn’t spend very much time on that, I don’t think Dad cared about that kind of thing.” 

“I think he didn’t want you guys to have an escape,” Vanya said quietly. “It didn’t matter with me, because I wasn’t -- because he made sure I wasn’t special. But if you guys had had an outlet that wasn’t, well, fighting crime and apparently staving off the apocalypse, you probably wouldn't have been so... Useful to him, I guess.” 

Klaus had never been the most focused student -- when he was young it was because of the ghosts who would hang about the Academy, and at least the ones who came into the schoolroom were vaguely friendly, angry but not attack-Klaus-by-the-throat angry, better than the ones in the mausoleum by a mile, but they _did_ make learning calculus a tad difficult, and by the time he’d figured out how to drown out the ghosts, well -- being high is not an ideal state to attend school. But he had loved poetry, even though the only poetry Dad had let them read were the classics, even modernist stuff was too liberal for him -- he wanted them to be able to recite the classics in their original Greek and Latin at dinner parties, like the trick ponies they were. But some Whitman and some Auden had managed to slip through. He’d loved Auden, and when he was in Vietnam, well -- some of those poems made a lot more sense, now. 

“Yeah,” Klaus said. “He really was an asshole, wasn’t he?”

“He really, truly, was.” 

They walked through the streets in silence after that, the warm sun baking on their backs and sinking into their weary bones. When they arrived at the library, Vanya lingered by the entrance for a moment. 

“Van? You good?” Klaus asked. 

“Yeah, I mean, yeah, just... just give me a moment.” 

Klaus shrugged. “Sure thing sis, you do you, I’ll throw out our coffee cups, you -- you hang tight and have a small emotional crisis, I’ll be right back.” 

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Vanya closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and then another. He sauntered slowly back and put a hand on her shoulder, causing her to jump slightly at the contact. 

“You ready?” he asked quietly. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, and visibly steeled herself. 

The library was a comforting place for both of them. Vanya had spent hours here as a child whenever she could -- which usually meant when the others were out on missions and she had been banished to her bedroom to practice. After a while, she realized that nobody was coming to check on her -- nobody ever came to check on her, not even mom -- and that she could sneak out and go wherever she wanted. She chose the library. 

Klaus, too, had learned to sneak out -- but he snuck out to silence the ghosts, which meant drugs, and while you certainly could set up a drug deal at the library, he’d done it in far stranger places than that -- it wasn’t the first stop. But the library was quiet, and there were hardly any ghosts there at all -- just one older man who had come there every day in his final years, having lost his family and friends long ago, and who had, it seemed, decided he wasn’t going to let a little thing like death get in the way of his routine. Klaus waved vaguely in his direction as he entered, and the old man nodded before returning to his newspaper. 

“Well?” Klaus asked once they were sitting behind a computer. “Who are we looking up first, little sister?”

“Stop calling me that,” she grumbled. “And -- I don’t know, I guess we might as well lookup Sissy first, gotta rip the bandaid off all at once and all that.” 

She started to type with shaking hands. “Sissy Cooper Dallas” 

The first link was to a page called “The Raging Grannies -- Dallas Chapter” 

“That seems promising, right?” Klaus said. “That could be it!” 

Vanya swallowed. “She wasn’t much of a rager when I left her, Klaus.” 

“Yeah, but 56 years changes a person.” He pushed her hand off the mouse. “C’mon, like you said, time to rip of the bandaid.” 

The website was simple, plain text on a purple background, and he clicked through the site’s photos until Vanya gasped. “That’s her. Oh my God, that’s her. Is she -- is she alive?”

Klaus clicked through. “Sure seems like it, or she was a month ago when they had their annual picnic -- Vanya, are you ok?” His sister had gone pale and looked like she might faint, the tips of her fingers tinged a glowing blue. 

“It’s ok, you’re ok,” he said quickly, “Just breathe with me Vanya, thatta girl, you can do it, c’mon, how many times have you done this for me, hmm? Just breathe. It’s ok. We can find her from this, ok? You don’t have to panic. It’s ok. Just breathe.” He continued to mumble a soothing litany of nonsense words until the glowing stopped. 

“I need a drink,” she said quietly. 

“That’s my line, and it’s 9 o’clock in the morning.”

“And that’s _my_ line, c’mon, let’s go back to the house, the others probably aren’t even awake yet.” 

Vanya had always been an early riser, but Klaus never had been, not until 10 months of war and getting up at the ass crack of dawn and his constant thrumming anxiety combined to make him -- fuck. He was a morning person now. How supremely un-cool of him. 

Back at the house, they stopped in the kitchen for more coffee -- “Vanya, dear, is everything alright?” Grace asked brightly from her customary spot in the kitchen. “And Klaus! You’re never up this early. What’s going on, children?”

“Nothing, mom, we just, uh, we went on a walk.” Vanya said quickly. 

Grace smiled at them. “How wonderful! It’s such a beautiful day.” 

“Yep, sure is, we’re going upstairs now, thanks mom, love you,” Klaus said hurriedly. 

They took a detour to their father's bar where they topped up their coffee liberally with whiskey. Vanya winced as she took a sip. “Shit, that’s strong.” 

“Breakfast of champions, darling,” Klaus trilled before breaking into song. “The best part of waking up is some whiskey in your cup!” 

Vanya giggled. “I’m almost positive those aren’t the words, and you’re not much of a singer.”

“I’m wounded, dear sister!” He laughed as well. 

When they were finished with their coffee, Klaus turned serious. “Now what do you want us to do? I took down the number for the chapter, I’m sure they can help us find something out.” 

Vanya nodded. “Yeah, we should -- I mean maybe we shouldn’t do this, Klaus, she stayed there on purpose, what if she doesn't want to hear from me? What if she stayed behind because -- because that was easier than coming to the future and then breaking up with me, what if she’s mad that I never looked her up, what if--MPPH!” Klaus cut off her words with a hand over her mouth, and she glared up at him. 

“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life wondering, Van? She’s old, she’s gotta be -- in her late 80s at the least, do you want to learn that she’s dead and lose this opportunity forever? I know I -- God almighty, I would give anything, literally anything, to find out that Dave was alive by some miracle and had joined some kind of, I don’t know, “elderly gays against the war” group or whatever. I’ll make the call, see if they have her number, we can go from there.”

She nodded, and he removed his hand from atop her mouth. As revenge, she licked it as he pulled it away. 

“You are disgusting! Wow, ok, change of plans, I don’t think anyone wants to hear from their ex-girlfriend if she is as gross as you are, never mind -- ok, ok, I’m calling.” He said when Vanya glared at him. “Jesus.” 

There was a phone on his desk, barely used except for calling his dealer, especially when he was a teenager -- if Klaus looked closely enough he was pretty sure he could put together his dealer’s number just by looking at the most worn numbers -- and he picked it up and put on his most charming voice. 

“Yes, hello, have I reached the Dallas Raging Grannies? I have? Oh, how wonderful -- I was just wondering, Sissy Cooper is one of your members, right? Why am I asking? Oh, I just -- “ he looked at Vanya with wide eyes, who looked back at him blankly. Neither of them had thought that far ahead. “My grandmother was very, uh, very close friends with her in the 60s, and she was hoping to get back in touch, do you have a number I could give her? She -- oh, my grandmother’s name? Uh, Vanya, sorry, I, uh, yes, I’ll pass the phone over, one moment.” 

He put his hand over the receiver and turned to Vanya. “Apparently, she _is_ the secretary for the Raging Grannies. That’s her on the phone right now. Vanya?”

She grabbed the phone out of his hands, not paying any attention to the startled look on his face. 

“Sissy?” She said excitedly. “Sissy, is that you?”

“Vanya?” the voice came down the line, crackling with age and the distortion of the telephone. “What took you so long?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon for how tech works in this world -- because their 2019 tech is very clearly different than our 2019 tech, nobody has cellphones, Allison looked up Leonard on microfilm, and Vanya wrote her tell-all book on a typewriter -- is that they do, in fact, have the internet, but it's closer to how the internet worked in the late 1990s and early 2000s -- no WiFi or social media, and although laptops exist they are big and clunky and expensive as all hell. So.  
> Also, the [ Raging Grannies ](https://raginggrannies.org/) are real, and awesome. They're a group of older women throughout North America who promote social justice and organize on progressive issues, initially starting as an anti-war and anti-nuclear weapon movement in the 1980s. I love them.  
> Also, comments are extremely welcome! Seriously, like I said, I haven't written fanfic in years and I'm unsure if this just tends to be a quieter fandom in that regard or if I have gotten incredibly bad at fanfic in the meantime. So just in case it's a "quieter" thing -- I always love feedback and love to chat!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus can't fix everyone's problems, no matter how much he wants to.

Klaus had to leave. 

It was beautiful, watching Vanya reconnect -- watching his little sister, who had deserved so much and gotten so little, finally get something she wanted -- but it hurt, like a deep fist in his chest, and his stomach was twisting in the way it used to when he was three days gone on no food and trying to get himself together enough to remember which food bank he’d already been to that month, and he -- 

He had to leave. 

Vanya needed this. Vanya deserved this. If any of them deserved a happy ending, it was her. 

He caught her eye and mimed going for a smoke, and she dismissed him with a flick of the wrist, her other hand clutching the phone like she had been lost at sea and it was a lifebelt, and he -- 

Well, Klaus is a coward. He left. 

He almost sprinted down the stairs, stopping abruptly when he got to the bottom because, shit, he hadn’t really thought this far ahead, and he didn’t know what to do now. His wallet was in his bedroom with Vanya and her beautiful, terrible happiness, and he was. Stuck. 

Fuck. His leg really fucking hurt. He briefly considered finding Grace, asking her for painkillers, letting her scan it and submitting himself to her cossetting until he felt safe again, but. No. That way lay madness. 

He wandered into the kitchen instead. He wasn’t much of a cook, but maybe he could make waffles, could do something -- anything -- for his family, anything that would make them feel better and that might distract him from the buzzing of his mind, so. Waffles. 

But man makes plans and God laughs, the little bitch, and so when he arrived into the kitchen it was to find that Grace had departed to go -- somewhere else, he wasn’t sure where she went on her off-time, did she have hobbies? Could you have hobbies as a robot? Was that like, a thing? -- and there was a fresh pot of coffee brewing and Allison was sitting at the table alone, staring off into space. 

“Hey, Ally,” Klaus said awkwardly. 

She didn’t look at him. “Hey, Klaus.” 

“Everything ok?” He asked cautiously. “You’re really stepping on my whole vibe here, the 1000 yard stare is really more of my deal, c’mon.” 

She smiled, or tried to, one corner of her mouth turning up in a parody of Allison Hargreeve’s 100-watt smile that emblazoned the cover of magazines and sold toothpaste the world over. 

Klaus was worried, now. “No, seriously, what’s wrong? Why are you sitting here in the kitchen alone? Did something -- did something happen? Where’s mom, anyway?”

“I sent her away,” Allison said distantly. “I needed... I wanted to be alone. “

“Well,” Klaus said briskly, “I will not be taking  _ that  _ hint, thank you very much. C’mon, you can tell me. I’ve already solved one sister’s emotional crisis today and it’s not even noon, I have room in my schedule for another.” 

At that, Allison laughed, a tiny, broken thing. “Is Vanya ok?”

“Vanya is currently having phone sex with her geriatric lesbian lover, I’d say Vanya’s doing better than any of us.” 

“What are you talking about?” She frowned, and looked annoyed, and ok, good, Klaus could work with annoyance, annoyance was familiar, anything was better than the dreadful emptiness. 

\--- twenty or seventy or a thousand years ago, Klaus had realized that he wasn’t smart, wasn’t fast, wasn’t anything special aside from his ghosts being more literal than most, but what he could always be was a target and that was enough, that helped. If Dad was mad at Klaus, if he was punishing him, he wasn’t shouting at Diego until he cried or slapping Allison for insolence or berating Vanya, poor powerless Vanya, for the sin of not being powerful enough to overcome his manipulations, chemical and otherwise, and so as Allison got quiet and Vanya slipped away into nothingness and Diego learned not to answer back, Klaus got louder and more outrageous until there was no more suitable target for their father’s ire than him, with his skirts and his cigarettes and glitter and refusal to make himself small -- 

Klaus waved a hand dismissively. “She’ll tell you if she wants to, I guess. Suffice it to say that I managed to track down her long-lost lesbian lover and they’re having a nice chat. So like I said, since I’m in a helpful mood -- what’ wrong?”

“I just,” Allison paused and took a sip of coffee. “I realized -- it’s 2019.” 

“Yes,” Klaus said cautiously. “Allison, are you having some kind of time travel sickness? Because if so, I retract my previous statement, Five is going to have to be the brother to help you out here, give me a minute and I’ll go wake our tiny psychopath.” 

“No,” Allison said quickly. “It’s not that. I don’t need you to find anyone. But it’s 2019, and I’ve left Ray behind, and that’s just -- that’s just something I’ll have to deal with, I guess. But I don’t have Ray and unless something dramatic has changed in our timeline, I don’t have Claire either.” 

“Ah,” Klaus said, pulling out a chair and sitting next to her. “I can see how that would be upsetting.” 

“No offense, Klaus,” Allison said. “But you really can’t. You don’t have kids.” 

“No, I don’t,” Klaus said softly. “I mean, assuming we aren’t counting Ben. But I think I know something about leaving people behind.” 

“Dave,” she said softly. 

“Dave,” he echoed. “I haven’t tried to find him yet, but it doesn’t seem like -- I don’t know. I couldn’t find him last time we were here, I don’t know why this would be any different.” 

“You haven’t even tried?” 

“Don’t be judgmental, I don’t-- anyway, it doesn’t matter, we aren’t making this about me and my many, many interesting life choices -- we were talking about you. And Ray. And Claire.” 

Allison stretched, shook out her hair. She really was annoyingly beautiful, Klaus thought. It wasn’t really fair. “We can’t -- I can’t think about Ray right now. That’s the past. This is now. And I need to see my daughter.” 

“I truly do admire your skills at compartmentalization, dear sister, but we haven’t finished talking about this, just so you know.” 

Allison snorted into her coffee. “Klaus, you’re the worst, you know that, right?”

Klaus grinned. “Heard that every day of my life, darling. But you’re stuck with me.” 

She rolled her eyes. “So, Klaus, since you’re all about fixing your sisters today -- any suggestions on how I deal with this one? My bastard ex-husband and the fucking courts?”

Klaus flinched at the unspoken  _ you can’t fix this one, Klaus, so stop trying _ . 

“Well,” Klaus said slowly. “I mean, could you call the courts and see if there’s like, a therapist they work with here that would count towards your sessions? Work towards a supervised visit?”

She scowled. “Yeah. Probably. But that won’t help me now.” 

“Some things take time,” Klaus said quietly. “Speaking as the expert on court-ordered mental health treatment, they’re also like, really easy to trick. And you are doing better! You probably wouldn’t even have to lie that much!” 

“I rumoured an entire store,” she said. “I rumoured cops. I was -- I rumoured a lot of people, Klaus.” 

“Those were extenuating circumstances!” 

“Do you think that was the first time I’d encountered racists, Klaus?”

“No, of course not, I didn’t mean -- I’m pretty sure that you hadn’t like, been in the fucking Jim Crow south before, though. That’s like, an extra level of racism. Super racism, maybe.” 

She snorted. “I managed without it, though. For over a year! And then I -- then I used it once, and it was so easy to use it again, to just... keep doing it.” She looked at him, her eyes dark. “And  _ that’s _ what scares me, Klaus. That’s why I haven’t called the court yet. It would be so easy to use it again.”

“Yeah,” Klaus said thoughtfully. “I mean, I don’t want to invalidate your trauma or your experiences, which were definitely like, absolutely awful and tragic, but like. Falling into a coping mechanism you thought you’d left behind because the circumstances were just so fucking awful it didn’t feel like there was any alternative, and now you’re not sure if you could stop, even if it means hurting someone you love? That’s pretty familiar, to me.” 

She closed her eyes. “Yeah, but Klaus, no offence, but like, you’re a junkie. We kind of -- expect that from you. I’m supposed to be better.” 

And fuck, that hurt, and it shouldn’t have hurt because he’d heard it so many times before and worse, but it just -- fuck. He could try and try and try for a million years, he could never touch anything harder than Aspirin and take up fucking meditation and, fuck, join the fucking Mormons or something, and that was all he would ever be, and he knew that he had maybe earned that, that he had hurt his family in ways he was only just beginning to understand, and he knew that he would never know what it was like to fall asleep at night wondering if your brother was safe or if he was dead, if he had had his head smashed in by the cops or someone he was using with or a john, but. He was better. He had been doing better. He didn’t -- he didn’t deserve to be attacked like that, not when he was doing better.

Allison blinked, clearly aware that she had hit a nerve. “Klaus, I’m sorry, that wasn’t -- that was unkind.” 

He shrugged, dismissing the haze of anxiety and panic and sadness with a quick exhale. “It’s fine. It’s what I am, I guess. It doesn’t matter.” 

“It does,” Allison said, not unkindly. “We should be better to each other, now. We have the chance.” 

Yeah. That was the thing, wasn’t it? There was no apocalypse to fend off, no dad to please -- they just had to live. And somehow that was harder. 

“Can you believe I kinda miss the apocalypse? Klaus asked, his mouth quirked into a half-smile. “I don’t know how to do this.” 

“Neither do I, obviously,” Allison said briskly. “But we will figure it out.” 

They sat in silence for a while. 

“Well,” Allison said after a few minutes. “It’s 9 AM in California. I’d better call the courts.” 

“So I did solve your problem, after all!” 

“Sure you did, Klaus,” Allison said, smiling indulgently. “If that’s what you need to believe.” 

\--- 

He was at a loss for what to do, after that, having clearly been summarily dismissed from the kitchen and Allison and shit, he didn’t know if Five or Diego or Luther were awake yet, he didn’t really know where they were -- in their bedrooms, he guessed, but he certainly wasn’t going to check -- and the day was young and he was so, so tired but there was nothing to do about it. There were ghosts everywhere in this house, both metaphorical and not, and Klaus didn’t want to think about the metaphorical ones any more than he wanted to physically confront the woman with her intestines hanging out who haunted the living room -- he didn’t know why, he didn’t remember anyone dying there, but in fairness there were large chunks of his childhood that he couldn’t remember, blocked out by drugs or trauma or growing up and shedding this place like a second skin and never, ever looking back -- and he was stuck. 

Fortunately, just as he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin and maybe, just maybe, seek out something that could dull the echoes just for a  _ minute _ , Vanya descended the stairs, pale and wan. 

“Hey,” Klaus said quietly. “How’d that go?”

Vanya opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded. “Good. Uh. Really good. She’s -- honestly, it sounded like she has more going on than I do, or at least than I did, before the, um, apocalypse.” 

“Does she -- “ Klaus didn’t know how to phrase what he wanted to say, like, how were you supposed to ask your 30-year-old sister if her 80-something year old lesbian lover was single and if she wanted to see her? Klaus wasn’t sure anyone knew how to phrase that. 

“Does she want to see you?” Klaus winced. That was definitely not how to phrase that. 

Vanya snorted. “Very diplomatic, Klaus.” 

“Thanks, I do try. Anyway, stop avoiding the question!” 

“Yeah. She was -- she’s doing great, she, um -- she has a wife, actually! Or had, I guess, it sounded like she lost her recently. I didn’t want to pry, but. She asked if I wanted to see her, and I didn’t -- I mean, I said yes, obviously, but we didn’t. We didn’t make any concrete plans. I told her I would call her back. To make concrete plans.” 

“You chickened out.” 

“Yes, Klaus, I chickened out! Pardon me for being unsure of how to deal with making plans to see my ex, who is now  _ 86 _ , by the way, it’s not like there’s a manual here!” 

“Bring her here,” Klaus suggested.    
“I’m not bringing her to my childhood home where I was drugged and my siblings were tortured on a daily basis. Yeah, no. That’s not happening.” 

“Bring her back to your place, then!” 

“I don’t even know if I still  _ have  _ my place, Klaus, I didn’t -- shit, I should check that, I should--  _ shit _ .” 

“I’ll come with,” Klaus suggested. 

“I don’t need a babysitter, Klaus, I’m not gonna blow up the moon again.” 

“Ever think that maybe I do?” Klaus asked lightly. “Give me a few minutes to put my face on, I’ll meet you at the door.” 

Ten minutes later, Klaus had carefully lined his eyes with a gold liquid liner he’d filched from Allison’s purse ages ago, although he supposed it was only yesterday according to this timeline. With the addition of a baby pink mesh tank top and short, acid-washed jean shorts, he surveyed himself in the mirror, dog tags glinting beneath the mesh. 

He was so tired, and looked it -- there were lines around his eyes he didn’t remember, and the gold liner only served to draw attention to the fact that his eyes looked -- shit, he didn’t want to call it “haunted”, that was too ironic. Tired. He looked tired. 

Vanya snorted when she saw his outfit. “A bit much for a weekday morning, don’t you think?”

“Piss off,” he said lightly. “I couldn’t dress like this for three years without getting my head cracked open and smeared across the pavement, I missed this.” 

They walked in silence, after that. It was a hot day, and humid -- muggy in a way that made his shoulders twitch, and the busy streets were loud, too loud, and Klaus found himself talking, anything to fill the silence and keep his brain in 2019. 

“I hope you haven’t been evicted, that’s never fun, I’ve been evicted -- and it happens once and then, bam, nobody wants to rent to you ever again, and shit, sorry, I guess I shouldn’t be scaring you like that -- it’s really no big deal, it happens sometimes, we can deal with it, and you have the benefit of being able to go back to the academy if you want, we could redecorate, I think the outside could do with a coat of paint, maybe pink? A pink house could be fun, why not, that could be an idea -- Luther would hate it, but that wouldn’t matter, I think if we teamed up we could take him don’t you Van?” 

A crashing sound jolted him out of his nonsense litany and he tensed, reached for his sidearm, shit, he had to go, they had to go, they had to fucking go  _ right now _ or they were going to die and he didn’t want that, but he wanted to kill even less, he’s been doing it since he was a child and it never got any easier even if he did get better at it and shit they really had to fucking  _ move _ . He grabbed the arm of the private who was next to him. 

“We need to move  _ now, _ ” he ordered quietly. “Seriously, time is money, chop chop, it’s fine to be scared but we really need to  _ move _ .” 

“Move? Why -- why do we need to move?”

“Don’t be an idiot, being scared comes later, ok? Let’s go.” 

“Klaus, I -- are you alright?”

Klaus blinked, the scene in front of him beginning to resolve itself but the adrenaline hadn’t left his veins and there was Vanya, sweet beautiful Vanya, and they were on a city street, which didn’t make sense but there was time to make things make sense later. 

“Fuck, Vanya, Jesus fucking christ what are you doing here?” A wave of irrational anger was running through him. “Never mind, that doesn’t matter, but we can’t fucking be here, we have to  _ go _ .” 

“Klaus,” Vanya said, and somehow he was sitting down, which didn’t make sense, that was the opposite of what he needed to be doing. “Klaus, just breathe with me, come on.” 

“Breathe? What the fuck are you talking about, we need to -- we need to --” and now that she mentioned it breathing sure was difficult, right now, but that was the humidity and the heat and whatever the fuck they were dropping by the bucket-full from the skies, Klaus vaguely remembered something about that from history class, it was poison but they wouldn’t figure that out for a few years, “Shit, I don’t know, I don’t know what we need to do, but we need to go.” 

“Klaus,” Vanya’s voice was soft and steady. “Just -- just do this with me, ok? And then if we still need to go, we can go.” 

Klaus nodded shakily, fumbling at his side and his sidearm wasn’t there but his cigarettes were and he tried and failed to light one, again and again, until Vanya gently took the cigarette from him and lit it, passing it back. 

He inhaled, the nicotine rushing through his veins as he regulated his breathing. “Motherfucker,” he swore. “We need to go.” 

“Klaus,” Vanya said again. “Do this with me. What are five things you can see?”

“What? Uh, shit, I -- I can see you, you’re in front of me, uh, this cigarette, my lighter, the ground -- the sidewalk? That can’t be right. Uh, there’s a pigeon over there. Shit, Vanya what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s ok, you’re doing great,” she assured him. “Five things you can smell, now.” 

“Uh, the smoke from this cigarette, the, uh, I guess that’s exhaust? Um, the garbage over there, the sewer, you -- are you wearing perfume?”

“Body wash actually, but that’s ok, you’re doing great, Klaus. Last one, promise. Five things you can hear, now.” 

Things were slowly coming into focus. “Uh, right, ok, there’s, uh, there was a really loud grinding noise a minute ago, but it’s gone, now, does that count? Uh, my voice, your voice, there’s, uh, someone’s having an argument over there in front of the Starbucks, someone just honked their horn, uh, I think that’s a bird?” 

“It was a garbage truck,” Vanya said seriously. “A minute ago.” 

“Right, shit, I -- shit, I’ve really embarrassed myself here, didn’t I? Fuck, Vanya, I’m so sorry, I never wanted you to see that, shit, shit, fuck.” He was crying now and he didn’t mean to be but the more he cried the more his eyes burned as sweat and liquid eyeliner dripped into them and he was just. Christ. What kind of asshole couldn’t go for a fucking walk with his fucking little sister without having a fucking nervous breakdown? 

“It’s ok,” Vanya said, rubbing soothing circles on his forearm. “It’s really ok. Everything is going to be fine.” 

“No, it won’t,” Klaus said miserably. “Nothing’s ever going to be ok ever again.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes!  
> "Junkie" is like. A horrific thing to call someone who used drugs, and I just wanted to note that here as well as show how it can feel for some people who inject drugs when they hear it. Even as the sibling of someone who injects drugs, it makes me feel dreadful, because the most common context I have heard it in my life is from cops and other authority figures who have decided that my brother's life doesn't matter because he is an injection drug user. The cops once broke his wrists and kicked his head in, while he was handcuffed, after a drug bust and told him nobody would believe a junkie when he complained. It gets thrown around a lot in this fandom, and I think that most people understand that it's a horrible word and a slur but I think that if you have never had it applied to you or someone you love you don't really understand that it's used to completely dehumanize people who inject drugs so that horrific physical and sexual violence can be inflicted on them. So like. Maybe don't?  
> Also: I have diagnosed PTSD and Klaus's flashback is loosely based on some of my own, but they look different for everybody, and crucially I do not have combat-related PTSD. So YMMV! The grounding technique Vanya uses is probably familiar to anyone who has received therapy for an anxiety disorder, including PTSD, and I have always found it to be both extremely annoying and extremely effective. The cigarettes, too, are part of that for Klaus -- and like don't take up smoking if you can help it, it sucks and is horrifically hard to quit, but I'm not gonna lie for me it has historically been a really effective coping mechanism for panic attacks and flashbacks because it both forces you to regulate your breathing and provides a sensation you can focus on.  
> As always, feedback is extremely welcome! I'd love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
